Hell is where you try to party

Berlin – Saturday night was always time for the trendy youth of Lviv to sip cocktails on the terrace or lose themselves in the rhythms of the basement DJ at People Place.

In almost three months of conflict, Lviv, about 70km from the Polish border, has been spared the destruction of large swathes of Ukraine’s east. Yet the city of 700 000 has seen major inflows of refugees – like these folk.

At People Place, 25-year-old Bohdan Sharhulenk remembers seeing his southern hometown of Mykolaiv bombarded as a hellish experience.

At the same venue are Sofya Romanuyk and Marta Yavorska, both 24. They are also still coming to terms with all they have experienced and displacement.

Romanuyk, neatly made up and elegantly dressed, says in the early days of the Russian offensive, in late February, she was so shocked she didn’t wash her hair for days.

“Psychologists say that for the first 21 days, it’s very hard to live in war, and then it becomes normal,” she says. “Now, I try to enjoy the good things: just to sit in a cafe, eat, drink, meet friends.”

Dima Dmitrenko, 25, arrived in Lviv from the eastern, battle-scarred city of Kharkiv a month ago. “Nothing is normal. Nothing. Nothing. It’s terrible,” he says.

Oksana Gariacha, 29, has been working at the bar since leaving Kyiv but says she can’t party.

“People are dying, we can’t do real hard parties,” she says.